Parvin v. State

113 So. 3d 1243, 2013 WL 1459252, 2013 Miss. LEXIS 145
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedApril 11, 2013
DocketNo. 2011-KA-01471-SCT
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 113 So. 3d 1243 (Parvin v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Parvin v. State, 113 So. 3d 1243, 2013 WL 1459252, 2013 Miss. LEXIS 145 (Mich. 2013).

Opinion

KITCHENS, Justice,

for the Court:

¶ 1. David W. Parvin appeals his murder conviction, characterizing his arguments as “a Weathersby case with a Daubert twist.”1 Parvin maintains that his wife’s death was caused by accident, and the State’s principal evidence refuting his defense at trial consisted of expert testimony, accompanied by a computer-generated reconstruction of the scene of her demise. The State argued that the experts’ opinions about the physical evidence proved the victim was intentionally killed. Although we find no merit in Parvin’s Weath-ersby claim, we agree that certain expert testimony and the visual depiction of that testimony should not have been presented to the jury. Because this evidence severely prejudiced Parvin’s defense, we reverse the conviction and remand the case to the Monroe County Circuit Court for a new trial.

The Evidence

¶ 2. On the morning of October 15, 2007, Dr. David Parvin2 called 911 to report that he accidentally had shot Joyce Parvin, his wife of forty-nine years, at their home near Aberdeen, Mississippi. When law enforce[1245]*1245ment officials arrived, Joyce was dead. She was found in a desk chair, her body draped over the left armrest, with a shotgun wound on the right side of her torso.

113. Parvin reported to the investigating officers that he had been rushing out of the house to shoot a beaver and was carrying a loaded shotgun.3 According to Par-vin, in his haste, he tripped, and during his fall, the gun discharged, shooting his wife, who was seated at their home computer. He told the officers that he believed the gun had been parallel to the floor or slightly elevated. He also was unsure about some of the other details: whether he or his wife had spotted the beavers first; whether he had tripped over the rug or the dog; whether his knee had hit the floor; and whether the barrel of the gun had hit the armrest of the chair where Joyce was sitting at the moment it discharged. Par-vin also said that he typically held the gun, a double-barreled Savage Arms Fox 12-gauge shotgun, with his left hand on the fore grip and his right hand around the trigger guard, but was unsure whether he had pulled one of the two triggers accidentally. Although Parvin was unsure about many of the details surrounding the incident, he maintained at trial that the shooting was an accident caused by his unexpectedly tripping and falling while holding the shotgun.

¶ 4. Two law enforcement officials who had been dispatched to the Parvin house that day testified as witnesses for the State. Curtis Knight of the Monroe County Sheriffs Office said that he believed Joyce possibly had suffered a contact wound based on what appeared to be gunpowder on Joyce’s shirt, and that no pellets from the shotgun had struck anything near her body. He also testified that the rug did not appear to be disturbed.

¶ 5. Arthur Chancellor, a crime-scene analyst for the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, confirmed Knight’s impression that the rug was undisturbed. He also testified that no marks were on the walls or the floor which would have suggested to him that someone had tripped while holding a gun. He further opined that the “injury appeared to be going in a downward angle.”

¶ 6. The State also presented the testimony of three witnesses, who were accepted by the trial court as experts in their respective fields: Starks Hathcock, a firearms expert who had tested the gun; Dr. Steven Hayne, a forensic pathologist who had performed the autopsy; and Grant Graham, a crime-scene analyst who presented to the jury a computer-generated depiction of the shooting. Hathcock testified that he had test fired the gun but was unable to establish a conclusive distance from muzzle to wound. In contrast to Hathcock’s testimony, Dr. Hayne — who had neither tested nor seen the shotgun— testified that the muzzle had been approximately four feet away and estimated that the shotgun pellets had entered Joyce’s torso “downward at 25 to 30 degrees [and] forward at approximately 15 degrees.” Finally, Graham presented to the jury a computer-generated depiction of the shooting, relying on various measurements, which included Hayne’s estimates.4

[1246]*1246¶ 7. The State also presented two lay witnesses who had spoken with Parvin about the shooting. Betty Hamblin testified that Parvin initially had told her Joyce had committed suicide, but then he “changed his story” to the version he had given in his initial interview with police. According to Hamblin, she and Parvin had been engaged in an extramarital affair pri- or to and after the death of his wife, and she said that, after his wife’s death, Parvin had asked her to marry him. She said that she later learned that Parvin had been seeing still another woman, whom he eventually married instead.

¶ 8. Parvin’s daughter, Amy Henley, also was a witness for the State and testified that, when she was growing up, her father had emphasized the importance of gun safety to her and her siblings, particularly with regard to ensuring that the gun remained unloaded.5 She said that she was shocked when she heard what had happened and that it was “hard for me to imagine my father, that’s been around guns all my life, would do something like that.” Additionally, Henley testified that, on the day of her mother’s shooting, her father’s first words to her were “[d]on’t worry about it. You’ll get over it.”

¶ 9. After a five-day trial, a Monroe County jury convicted Parvin of murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Aggrieved, Parvin appeals the judgment of conviction.

The Issues

¶ 10. Parvin asserts that, because the only evidence that substantially contradicted his version of events was unreliable and inadmissible, this Court should reverse his conviction and render a judgment of acquittal. While we agree with Parvin that the State’s case rested in large part on inadmissible evidence, we do not find that he is entitled to a judgment of acquittal based on the Weathersby rule. Because we reverse his conviction due to the admission of highly speculative and prejudicial evidence, we do not address his assignments of error related to certain jury instructions.

I.

¶ 11. Parvin argues that the computer-generated depiction of the shooting should have been excluded as scientifically unreliable, because it was based largely on Dr. Hayne’s estimated measurements regarding distances at the scene and pellet trajectories and because it was created despite unknown variables (e.g., Joyce’s position).6 Parvin also argues that Hayne’s measurements were scientifically unreliable because they were not based on sufficient data, and because they were outside the scope of a forensic pathologist’s expertise and function. To emphasize his point, Parvin correctly notes that the testimony of the State’s firearms expert substantially contradicted that of Dr. Hayne.

Standard of Review and Pertinent Legal Standards

¶ 12. On appeal, we review errors in the admission of evidence, including expert testimony and demonstrative evidence, for an abuse of discretion. See, e.g., Bishop v. State, 982 So.2d 371, 380 (Miss.2008) (standard of review for expert testimony); Lewis v. State, 725 So.2d 183, 189 (Miss.1998) (standard of review for de[1247]

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

State of Mississippi v. N.J.
Court of Appeals of Mississippi, 2023
Luis Alberto Figueroa v. State of Mississippi
Court of Appeals of Mississippi, 2021
David Thomas v. State of Mississippi
249 So. 3d 331 (Mississippi Supreme Court, 2018)
Jafron Roberts v. State of Mississippi
Mississippi Supreme Court, 2017
James Douglas Willie v. State of Mississippi
204 So. 3d 1268 (Mississippi Supreme Court, 2016)
David W. Parvin v. State of Mississippi
212 So. 3d 863 (Court of Appeals of Mississippi, 2016)
Natyyo Gray v. State of Mississippi
202 So. 3d 243 (Court of Appeals of Mississippi, 2015)
James C. Newell, Jr. v. State of Mississippi
175 So. 3d 1260 (Mississippi Supreme Court, 2015)
Lorenzo Hull v. State of Mississippi
174 So. 3d 887 (Court of Appeals of Mississippi, 2015)
James C. Newell, Jr. v. State of Mississippi
176 So. 3d 78 (Court of Appeals of Mississippi, 2014)
Wilson v. State
149 So. 3d 544 (Court of Appeals of Mississippi, 2014)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
113 So. 3d 1243, 2013 WL 1459252, 2013 Miss. LEXIS 145, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/parvin-v-state-miss-2013.